The Future of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda:

Advancing Innovation, Resilience, and Collective Action

Wednesday, November 12th, 2025

9:00am-5:00pm ET

Elliott School of International Affairs

Lindner Family Commons, 6th Floor

1957 E St NW, Washington, D.C. 20052

Overview

Women In International Security (WIIS) is pleased to host the full-day conference, titled “The Future of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda: Advancing Innovation, Resilience, and Collective Action,” on November 12th, 2025, in partnership with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Athena Initiative: Advancing Human Security in International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, the New Lines Institute, and the Institute of World Affairs (IWA). Marking the 25th anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 and the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda, WIIS’ conference will convene an interdisciplinary body of WPS leaders and experts to reinvigorate the WPS agenda and mobilize for change in the next 25 years and beyond.

Assuming an international leadership role in addressing the global implementation gap of the WPS agenda, WIIS launched the “1325@25” Initiative in October 2024 to adapt the WPS discourse to today’s evolving security landscape and create opportunities for the transformative implementation of the WPS agenda. So far in 2025, WIIS has led discussions at the 69th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69), launched the “Framers of 1325” series, and through #WIISVoices, presented testimonials from WIIS affiliates on their WPS-related activities, reinforcing the crucial role that WPS principles play in achieving peace and security. We have published blogs and policy briefs that present future visions of the WPS agenda and aim to conduct briefings for Congressional members and staff in the coming months. The collected research and contributions gathered over the past year will enhance the conference proceedings.

Concept Note

WIIS’ conference on “The Future of the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda: Advancing Innovation, Resilience, and Collective Action” will serve as the culmination of WIIS’ “1325@25” Initiative, integrating conclusions and recommendations from our year-long programming into the conference proceedings. Coming out of a turbulent October for the WPS agenda, WIIS will offer this conference as a defining moment for the civil society community to collectively identify strategies to continue to advance WPS principles. To that aim, our conference will consist of:

• One opening fireside chat with a panel of experts framing the WPS agenda’s major successes, its current state of play, and its future pathway coming out of the October 2025 anniversary;
• One high-level keynote speaker during the lunch hour; and
• Three subject matter expert (SME)-led panels and sessions throughout the day organized around the following themes: 1) Reconceptualizing the WPS Agenda and its Future in a Changing Political Environment; 2) Reassessing the Tools of WPS Agenda amid New and Emerging Insecurities; and 3) Mobilizing Collective Action for WPS Implementation.

The conference will benefit from WIIS’ wide-reaching network and will assemble an audience of 75+ attendees from sectors ranging across civil society, think tanks, academia, government and UN offices, military and defense sectors, and policy practitioners. Refreshments will be provided throughout the day.

Panel 1: Reconceptualizing the WPS Agenda and its Future in a Changing Political Environment

This first panel aims to address: How do we reclaim and safeguard the WPS agenda in today’s complex and transitional political environment, marked by rising authoritarianism, attacks on democratic principles, and the undermining of multilateralism, collective human rights, and civic spaces globally? The panel will ground responses to this question across the broader political environments and the multilateral regional security architectures of Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and North America.

The evolution of the WPS agenda—ten UNSCR resolutions, 108 National Action Plans, regional initiatives, and countless activist and philanthropic projects—attest to its global impact. Though the WPS agenda may not have achieved everything it set out to do 25 years ago, it has nonetheless developed into a significant and valuable global framework for advancing women’s rights in conflict and crisis settings. Taking this assertion as the starting point, this first session will open with a discussion of how to reclaim the WPS agenda as a vital whole-of-society security approach to resolving conflict and strengthening democracy.

How do we position the WPS agenda to make it (more) secure in a time when rules and rights-based governance is under threat? This first panel session will critically analyze this question, situating the WPS agenda within larger changing political environments, and importantly, will present innovative ideas that capture the vibrancy and creativity of WPS implementation that these challenging contexts themselves have generated.

Interactive Breakout Sessions & Plenary Feedback Discussion: Reassessing the Tools of the WPS Agenda amid New and Emerging Insecurities

The second session will turn to re-examining the WPS agenda and its traditional implementation tools in light of new and emerging security threats. Through breakout rooms led by a facilitator and two expert speakers, and a plenary feedback discussion, these interactive sessions will explore how we must think differently about our conventional approaches to WPS implementation in a rapidly shifting global system characterized by growing security challenges like cyber, health, climate insecurity, and political backlash. This panel will ask: How does the WPS agenda intersect with these security threats? How do we counter the rising global backlash against the WPS agenda and women’s rights? Further, how do we consider these insecurities from an intersectional lens? What opportunities and challenges arise for innovation and implementation of the WPS agenda at these intersections?

Importantly, this panel will discuss national action plans (NAPs), widely regarded as the key mechanism for institutionalizing the WPS agenda, and their adaptation and future implementation amid political insecurity. This session suggests that the long-term sustainability of the WPS agenda lies in building complementary approaches to traditional implementation tools, including grassroots organizing and social movements. How can these alternative movements carry forward WPS principles and secure political change when the opportunity to engage with state processes and action plans is difficult or even impossible,? How can we engage with these new security threats at a moment of eroding global governance? This discussion will ultimately analyze these new forms of insecurity and debate what they mean for NAPs and the future of WPS agenda implementation more broadly.

Panel 3: Mobilizing Collective Action for WPS Implementation

Synthesizing the prior sessions of the conference, which will have explored how the WPS agenda can be implemented in an increasingly insecure and transitional spaces and analyzed how it intersects with emerging security threats, this panel will consider: How can we reinvigorate and better implement the WPS agenda through renewed, diverse, and cross-sectoral coalitions and movements? This final session will be structured as an open panel discussion, bringing together experts from academia, the peacebuilding and multilateral spaces, and the defense and security sector. Weaving together “lessons learned” from a month of intensive debate on how to remain adaptive and at the forefront of WPS implementation in today’s challenging political environment, discussants will share forward-thinking approaches to creative coalition-building and activism, carrying forward the WPS agenda’s vision: to transform how the world understands peace and security by recognizing that peace is more durable, inclusive, and just when women are fully engaged.